It's a town that celebrates living more than any other -- a direct result of New Orleans having mourned longer and more often than most.

No other metropolis has the close, almost loving relationship with death that New Orleans has. It is home to renowned cemeteries, deeply haunted neighborhoods, a history of grisly cruelty and its own unique brand of funeral ceremony that grieves with an exhale and exults with the next breath.

The unique vitality that comes from being closely associated with mortality is a large part of what makes a city that is at once laid-back and hard-partying, a town that Herb Caen would have dubbed Baghdad by the Bayou and is as close to San Francisco as you will find in the South.

New Orleans seduces with sweet Southern ease, European antiquity, Caribbean pageantry and the fact that you're never more than a few hours from a party and rarely farther than a few blocks from the best meal you've had in years. It is a special blend, born of a cultural and ethnic stew that makes "melting pot" both cliché and understatement.

To walk the cobblestone rues of Vieux Carré, the French Quarter, in the morning is to witness death and renewal -- the last strains of the previous night's mayhem and shopkeepers and horse carriages playing the opening chorus of a new day.

Like most of the city, the Quarter is wrought iron and music and voodoo: forged to withstand tremendous forces, born at the crossroads of suffering and creativity, and a way of life that, to survive, disguises itself within convention.

The Big Easy's magic isn't confined to its most-popular neighborhood. Outside the Quarter, away from the armies of tourists and everyday-is-Mardi- Gras crowd, life is still different than anywhere else. High finance in the downtown is imbued with hospitality; genteel society meetings in the Garden District are epic events; and the funky, slightly dangerous vibe in the Faubourg Marigny attracts the city's next generation.

The palpable lust for living that hangs in the air throughout much of New Orleans (often mistaken for humidity) is a kind of magic, not the fabricated, choreographed kind from Disneyland, but something ancient and naturally occurring.

It's in Mardi Gras. It's in parades. It's in every Saturday night, when thousands sidle up to bars for music and a lethal red concoction called a Hurricane.

It's in the jazz that, by its invention here, is so much a part of New Orleans, a music born almost entirely from suffering, a method of escape from suffering and the hope of a much better life after this one. Jazz is the cornerstone of the New Orleans funeral parade -- the slow somber procession to the graveyard accompanied by a mournful "Closer Walk With Thee" or "Flee as a Bird," followed by a joyous chorus, the dominant strain of which is "Didn't he ramble? He rambled till the butcher cut him down."

Hurricane Katrina is the latest brush with death -- the worst since her Great-Aunt Betsy rained catastrophe in 1965 -- a reminder that sometimes the Big Easy is difficult.

In its early years, yellow fever claimed tens of thousands, including 8, 000 in 1853 alone. The fires of 1788 and 1794 each left the town a smoldering heap and killed hundreds, and the city is no stranger to plague. Because of the city's precarious location between the Mississippi River and the huge Lake Pontchartrain, graveyards were raised above ground (although bodies were often left behind, meaning that almost every building in the French Quarter is built on top of graves). All along, the river has been New Orleans' harshest mistress, providing it with riches while at times exacting a terrible price.

No one in New Orleans forgets these disasters -- they're part of the culture that enthralls everyone who spends a wild night or a quiet morning in its streets. With Katrina, there has been death and there will be suffering, but New Orleans isn't ready for the slow march to "Closer Walk With Thee."